feelings of social integration and solidarity.
Source: Hall, Edward T. 1984. The Dance of Life: The Other Dimension of Time. New York: Penguin Random House.
By Keith A. Roberts. Your coauthor studied and traveled among Native American groups, often with groups of students, and was fascinated by their cultures.
Thinking Sociologically
Small, tightly knit societies with no meso or macro level often stress cooperation, conformity, and personal sacrifice for the sake of the community. Complex societies with established meso- and macro-level linkages tend to be more individualistic, stressing personal uniqueness, individual creativity, and critical thinking. Why do you think this is the case?
Components of Culture: Things and Thoughts
Things (material objects) and thoughts (nonmaterial ideas) make up our culture. Together they provide the guidelines for our lives.
Material Culture: The Artifacts of Life.
Material culture includes all the human-made objects we can see or touch, all the artifacts of a group of people—grindstones for grinding cassava root, microwave ovens for cooking, bricks of mud or clay for building shelters, hides or woven cloth for making clothing, books or computers for conveying information, tools for reshaping environments, vessels for carrying and sharing food, and weapons for dominating and subduing others.
Some material culture is from the local community; it is of micro-level origin. The kinds of materials with which homes are constructed and the materials used for clothing often reflect the geography and resources of the local area. Houses are an especially good example of material culture, because they result from local ideas of what a “home” looks like and shape the interactions and attitudes of people in the society. Likewise, types of jewelry, pottery, musical instruments, or clothing reflect tastes that emerge at the micro and meso levels of family, community, and subculture. At a more macro level, national and international corporations interested in making profits work hard to establish trends in fashion and style that may cross continents and oceans.
▲ Homes are good examples of material culture. Their construction is influenced not only by local materials but also by ideas of what a home should be. Homes shape the context in which family members interact, so they can influence the nonmaterial culture—including beliefs, values, and symbols. Houses, like clothes, act as symbols that communicate levels of prestige.
Keith Roberts
Material culture helps drive the globalization process. Workers in Asia and Central American countries now make many of our clothes. Our shoes may come from the Philippines. The last banana you ate probably grew in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, or Panama. That romantic diamond engagement ring—a symbol that represents the most intimate tie—may well be imported from a South African mine using low-paid or even slave labor. Our cars consist of parts produced on nearly every continent.
Thinking Sociologically
Think of examples of material culture that you use daily: stove, automobile, cell phone, computer, refrigerator, clock, money, and so forth. How do these material objects influence your way of life and the way you interact with others? How would your behavior be different if one of these material objects, say iPhones or money, did not exist?
Nonmaterial Culture: Beliefs, Values, Rules, and Language.
Saluting the flag, saying a blessing before meals, flashing someone an obscene gesture, and a football coach signaling what defensive formation to run for the next play are all acts with symbolic meaning. In the case of the salute and the prayer, the acts undergird a belief about the nation or about a higher spiritual presence. In each case something is communicated, yet each of these acts refers to something more abstract than any material object.
▲ Coaches and players use hand signals to cue each other into an upcoming play or to convey what defense or offense to set up—an example of nonverbal communication.
© Reuters/Matt Sullivan
Nonmaterial culture refers to the thoughts, language, feelings, beliefs, values, and attitudes that make up much of our culture. It is the invisible and intangible parts of culture that involve society’s rules of behavior, ideas, and beliefs that shape how people interact with others and with their environment. Although we cannot touch the nonmaterial components of our culture, they pervade our life and influence how we think, feel, and behave. Nonmaterial culture is complex, comprising four main elements: values, beliefs, norms or rules, and language.
Values are shared judgments about what is desirable or undesirable, right or wrong, and good or bad. They express the basic ideals of any group of people. In industrial and postindustrial societies, for instance, a good education is highly valued. That you are in college shows you have certain values toward learning and education. Gunnar Myrdal, a Swedish sociologist and observer of U.S. culture, referred to the U.S. value system as the American creed, so much a part of the way of life that it acquires the power of religious doctrine (Myrdal 1964). We tend to take our core values for granted, including freedom, equality, individualism, democracy, free enterprise, efficiency, progress, achievement, and material comfort (Williams 1970).
At the meso and macro level, conflicts may arise between groups in society because of differing value systems. For example, there are major differences between the values of various Native American groups and the dominant culture—whether that dominant culture is in North, Central, or South America (Lake 1990; Sharp 1991). Consider the story in the Sociology Around the World above about Rigoberta Menchú Tum and the experiences of Native American populations living in Guatemala.
Sociology Around the World
Social Justice in a Guatemalan Village
In her 57 years, Rigoberta Menchú Tum experienced the closeness of family and cooperation in village life. These values are important in Chimel, the Guatemalan hamlet where she lived. She also experienced great pain and suffering with the loss of her family and community. A Quiche Indian, Menchú became famous throughout the world in 1992, when she received the Nobel Peace Prize for her work to improve conditions for Indian peoples.
Guatemalans of Spanish origin hold the most power in Guatemala and have used Indians almost as slaves. Some of the natives were cut off from food, water, and other necessities, but people in Menchú’s hamlet helped support each other and taught children survival techniques. Most people had no schooling. Menchú’s work life in the sugarcane fields began at age 5. At 14, she traveled to the city to work as a domestic servant. While there, she learned Spanish, which helped her be more effective in defending the rights of the indigenous population in Guatemala. Her political coming of age occurred at age 16, when she witnessed her brother’s assassination by a group trying to expel her people from their native lands.
